CHAPTER 1:
It's 'a letter your Father has written...'

I can still picture the dead-eye look of Wade Rowdon, the man I had recruited to explain Christianity to me. "Do you accept the Bible as the inspired word of God?" he asked. Inspired word of God...I remember my sister using that phrase in one of her attempts to hook me into what I then thought was born-again baloney. "If you don't accept it," Wade explained, "we have nothing else to talk about."

All I knew of the Bible was that in freshman religion class at a Catholic high school in Cincinnati in 1968 we were allotted 15 minutes each day for reading it. I usually slept or daydreamed. As Catholics, we had Sunday missals, which is a Vatican-style Bible paraphrase.

I really didn't know whether or not I accepted it, but I wanted Wade to get on with our discussion. "Yes," I said, making a mental asterisk that could trigger an escape hatch later if God's inspiration did not stand my scrutiny.

Everything Wade said from that point was based on quotation from a hand-sized New Testament he cupped in his palms. He would eventually make a statement of lasting impression:

"The bible is a letter your father has written to you. Don't you think you ought to read it?"

That seemed reasonable but a major stumbling block was that I could not grasp the meaning amidst the thees and thous and term the likes of "Thus saith." My sports-page mentality wondered how Wade, a former Major League baseball player, ever made sense out of the Bible. Still, Wade's idea of a father's letter was a point worth exploring: perhaps there was truth and direction camouflaged in that strange phraseology. I needed something to elevate my life several notches.

Discipleship

We met in a small group at Wade's house several times over the next few weeks, a course of action Wade termed discipleship. This was after I had become born-again, accepting Jesus in John 3:3-16 fashion. Grasping the Bible was comparable to learning a new software program, I surmised. Master a few conventions and this thing will start humming, or so I figured.

Wade made another statement that echoed a point my brother-in-law had regularly mentioned. The Word of God has to flow through your heart first, and then to your mind. What? This was a concept totally foreign to Mr. Analytical, as I fancied myself. (Later I would come to respect the admonishment of Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust not in your own understanding...) Upon Wade's mention it struck me that there must be something I had yet to figure out.

Thousands of hours of bible study later, I've devised an analogy that will sound silly, but should be effective. Think of the Bible as being like a hologram - you know, those three-dimensional pictures you stare into at displays the shopping mall. You won't see the picture without looking into it deeply enough, and from the proper angle. The Bible is that way.

Not Like Newspaper

The Bible doesn't read like a newspaper. It wasn't written yesterday by a cultural contemporary aiming at those of a 6th grade level. You need insights into Judaism, along with the culture and circumstances from which the verse was birthed. When these factors are meshed into a heart that's longing and tender toward God, the majesty of the Bible bursts forth.

The text of the Bible was compiled by 40 writers - from fishermen to kings - encompassing empires from Babylon to Rome, in life-spans of 16 centuries. Its 66 books are divided into Old and New Testaments (or Covenants), originally written in Hebrew or Greek, etched on everything from papyri to parchment, preserved through pre-Xerox generations by tedious scribing.

The first suggestion I have for grasping the Bible is to get a good pastor. Link yourself to a preacher who is continually mining the deep treasures of Holy Scripture - and not one who promotes his own philosophy. I have such a pastor.

Here are some practical Bible-deciphering techniques.

1. Use Bible aids. Indispensable to any examination of Scripture are a bible concordance and dictionary. The concordance lists other passages containing the identical word. Along with its definition, context in other passages can be used to pinpoint meaning.
2. Start with an easy translation. The Holy Bible undergoes almost continual translation, each aimed at making its meaning more clear through use of contemporary nomenclature. Precise meaning can be sacrificed, however, in translating the original word, or simplifying the King James English translation of the 16th century. It is generally perceived that the easier to read, the less precise. Probably the loosest translation now popular is The Living Bible. The versions I like best and quote most often are: the New International Version [NIV], New American Standard [NAS], New King James [NKJ], and King James [KJV].
3. Grasp the time line. The New Testament was written in a span of little more than one-half century, but the Old Testament encompassed more than a dozen. Who came first: Abraham or Moses? Was Daniel before David or after him? When did Noah enter the ark? The sequence of events makes a difference, as does the evolution of nations and inhabited lands. You can find various materials to assist learning this.
4. Understand Jewish feasts and customs. Jesus was Jewish, and you can't appreciate much of the Bible without understanding matters such as Temple worship, Jewish feasts and customs. You'll also miss the undercurrent of friction between Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus) and the religious establishment of the day. Usurping the promises made to God's Chosen People, many Christian denominations push Judaism aside and miss out on the deep treasures of the Bible. Christianity has a Jewish heritage, and I believe Jesus will come back as a Jew.
5. Learn the culture. The culture of Jesus' time is reflected in passages such as "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." And "heap hot coals of fire upon your enemies' head." These are just two examples. Reading such sayings in today's understanding provides a totally different meaning than what Jesus intended. The "eye of a needle" was a smaller inner gate within the city gate (kind of like a pet door) that could be more easily guarded. It allowed travelers and merchants arriving at night entrance into the city fortress, instead of having to camp outside where they would be vulnerable to thieves. But they would have to unload their camels which would then crawl through on their knees. The eye of the needle, therefore, was an after-hours safety precaution. "Heap hot coals" refers to the practice of lending coals to a neighbor who had run out. The coal was carried in a large saucer placed on top of your head, so "to heap hot coals" means to be gracious in lending even your enemy what was then an essential element in heating and cooking.
6. Remember English is ever-changing. What do words such as bad and gay mean today, compared to what they meant decades ago? Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible - along with perhaps Aramaic - are more precise. For instance, we translate eight different Hebrew Words into l-o-v-e. But God had a specific reason for using agape, phileo, or eros - slightly varying types of love. This is why the Bible has to be studied, and not merely read.
7. Recognize prophets' dilemma. Put yourself in Ezekiel's place. It's 500 B.C. What words do you pull from your vocabulary to describe automobiles, tanks, airplanes, 20th century weaponry (perhaps), and maybe some things we don't even know about yet? How would readers pre-dating these inventions understand?
8. Grasp the full impact of descriptions. The apostle Paul called himself a servant or "bond-servant" of Jesus in Romans 1:1 and Titus 1:1. This term indicates that he had the chance to go free, but freely chose to serve a master - in this case, Jesus. Serving God as an expression of our love for Jesus means that we are totally sold out to him as both Savior and Lord. The concept of a "kinsman redeemer" (book of Ruth) is another example.
9. Realize Jesus may have been intentionally vague. Why was Jesus so vague, particularly toward his apostles? Why didn't he just lay it out for them in terms that would be obvious, instead of things such as "In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a while you will see me." (John 16:16)? Why didn't he say, "Hey, they're going to arrest me, put me through a bogus trial, then hang me on a cross? The third day in the tomb I will resurrect from the dead." Some people think that Jesus was intentionally vague. One reason for this would be so that total dedication would be required in order to dig out the meaning of Scripture, resulting in the divine gift of a discerning spirit. Jesus didn't want the devil, a keen eavesdropper, to know the plan. Remember that Satan quoted scripture - or at least his distortion of it - both to Eve in the Garden, and to Jesus in the wilderness.
10. Don't expect instant explanation. God had to build understanding in small steps. For this reason, He did not explain everything the first time a topic is introduced. This makes us keep searching and digging.

Scientific Support

"The greatness of God will not fit into the smallness of our understanding." This statement leapt at me from the pages of a discipleship manual. God is not limited by our scope of comprehension.

Jonah's survival for three days in the belly of a great fish (commonly considered to be a whale but not actually stated so in Scripture). This still has me perplexed. But the parting of the Red Sea and some of the other amazing Bible episodes have garnered scientific explanation, even to the point of being aired on prime-time CBS television in May 1992 ("Ancient Secrets of the Bible"). According to scientists, at this particular point along the Red Sea, called the Mouth of the Gorges, there is a land bridge submerged beneath the water. A forceful wind very possibly could blow this water back so that this submerged land bridge would become visible.

Whether that is the way it happened we don't know. But we do know from Scripture that God caused a strong eastward gale. The waters separated wide enough for approximately two million people to cross in one night.

Bible proof is an extensive and perhaps endless topic. The key to unlocking your understanding is a willingness to hand over control of your life to Jesus, subjugating every thought and action to his lordship.

If you have wanted to believe the Bible but can't figure it out, generations ago Mark Twain recognized your predicament. "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand," said the American literary giant, "but the passages that bother me are the ones I do understand."

Abraham Lincoln said "Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better person."

As for me, whatever asterisk I attached to my affirmative response about accepting the Bible as God's inspired word has long been expunged. My scrutiny dissolved quickly once my pastor, Mike Coleman, started laying out his insights into Bible prophecy during Wednesday night class at the Sanctuary, DeLand Church of God.

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